Ethnic Minority-Majority Unions in Estonia Maarten Ham, Tiit Tammaru
To cite this version:
Maarten Ham, Tiit Tammaru. Ethnic Minority-Majority Unions in Estonia. European Journal of Population / Revue européenne de Démographie, 2011, 27 (3), pp.313-335. 10.1007/s10680-011- 9236-z. hal-00645367
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Maarten van Ham (corresponding author)* and Tiit Tammaru** *OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5030, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] **University of Tartu, Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies, Department of Geography, Vanemuise 46, Tartu 51014, Estonia.
Please note that the address of Maarten van Ham will change from the 1st of September 2011. Please use the new address as affiliation on the published paper:
OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment Delft University of Technology P.O. Box 5030 2600 GA Delft The Netherlands Phone: 0031 (0)15 2783005 Fax: 0031 (0)15 2783450 E-mail: [email protected]
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the valuable comments made by the anonymous referees and editors. We also acknowledge the financial support provided by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Science (target financed research project no. SF0180052s07), Estonian Science Foundation (grant no. 8774) and the NORFACE research programme on Migration in Europe - Social, Economic, Cultural and Policy Dynamics. Maarten van Ham contributed to this paper while working at the Centre for Housing Research (CHR), University of St Andrews.
1 Ethnic minority–majority unions in Estonia
ABSTRACT: Ethnic minority–majority unions – also referred to as mixed ethnic unions – are often seen as the ultimate evidence of the integration of ethnic minorities into their host societies. We investigated minority–majority unions in Estonia, where ethnic minorities account for one-third of the total population (Russians 26 per cent, followed by Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Finns and other smaller groups). Using data from the 2000 Estonian census and regression models, we found that Slavic women are less likely to be in minority–majority unions than are members of other minority groups, with Russians being the least likely. Finns, who are culturally most similar to the Estonian majority population, are the most likely to form a union with an Estonian. For ethnic minority women, the likelihood of being in minority–majority unions is highest in rural areas and increases over generations, with third-generation immigrants being the most likely. Estonian women are most likely to have a minority partner when they or their parents were born abroad and when they live in urban areas. Our findings suggest that both the opportunity to meet potential partners and openness to other ethnic groups are important factors for understanding the dynamics of minority–majority unions.
KEYWORDS: ethnicity, country of birth, generation, minority–majority unions, mixed ethnic unions, Estonia
Unions entre membres d'ethnies minoritaires et majoritaires en Estonie
Les unions entre membres d'une minorité ethnique et membres de la population majoritaire – également dénommées unions mixtes – sont souvent considérées comme la preuve évidente de l’intégration des minorités ethniques dans leur société d’accueil. Cette recherche s’intéresse aux unions mixtes en Estonie, pays où les minorités ethniques représentent un tiers de la population totale (dont 26 % de Russes, suivis des Ukrainiens, des Biélorusses, des Finlandais et enfin d’autres groupes numériquement plus faibles). Les analyses réalisées à partir des données du recensement estonien de 2000 et de modèles de régression montrent que la probabilité d'union mixte est moins importante chez les femmes slaves que chez celles appartenant à d’autres minorités ethniques, les russes ayant les probabilités les plus faibles. Les Finlandais, culturellement plus proches de la population estonienne majoritaire, ont les probabilités les plus élevées de contracter une union avec un(e) Estonien(ne). Chez les femmes des minorités ethniques, la probabilité d'union mixte est plus élevée dans les régions rurales et augmente parmi les générations les plus jeunes, les petits-enfants d’immigrés ayant les probabilités les plus élevées. Les femmes estoniennes, pour leur part, ont plus de chances d’avoir un partenaire appartenant à une minorité quand elles-mêmes, ou leurs parents, sont né(e)s à l’étranger ou lorsqu’elles vivent dans des zones urbaines. Nos résultats semblent indiquer que les opportunités de rencontres avec des partenaires potentiels et l’ouverture aux autres groupes ethniques sont des facteurs importants pour la compréhension des dynamiques des unions mixtes.
Mots-clés : ethnie, pays de naissance, génération, unions minorité-majorité, unions mixtes, données de recensement, Estonie
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1. INTRODUCTION The international literature on the segregation and integration of immigrants has, over recent decades, shown an increasing interest in mixed ethnic unions between minority and majority ethnic groups1. The occurrence of such unions is seen as evidence of the integration of ethnic minorities into their host societies (Alba and Nee, 2003; Peach, 1980; Kalmijn, 1993; Wong, 1999; Wright et al., 2003; Holloway et al., 2005; Fu, 2006; Feng et al., 2010). Mixed ethnic unions are important markers of integration because the ethnic minority groups that are most integrated into their host societies are also those most likely to form a union with a native. In general, people choose a partner from their own groups (endogamy) or someone that is similar in social status (homogamy) (Kalmijn, 1998). As a result, partners are often similar in terms of age, level of education, ethnic background, religion, and social status (Smits, 1996). Mixed ethnic partnering overcomes ethnic barriers, which indicates that ethnic differences in society are becoming less important. However, in most western countries that have a substantial immigrant population, the percentage of mixed ethnic unions has remained modest (Kalmijn, 1998; Feng et al., 2010). For example, it has been estimated that in 2001 in England and Wales, approximately 2.5 per cent of all unions were mixed ethnic2. In Estonia, according to the 2000 census, approximately 9 per cent of all unions are between members of the minority and majority populations. Despite this relatively high percentage of minority–majority unions, little is known about the unions’ characteristics. This is the first study to examine minority–majority unions in Estonia, which has one of the highest shares of ethnic minorities in Europe. The ethnic landscape in Estonia is dominated by two large ethnic groups, namely Estonians (68%) and Russians (26%). Other groups with more than 10,000 people are Ukrainians (2%), Byelorussians (1%) and Finns (1%). In addition, there are many smaller ethnic groups who together comprise less than 2 per cent of the population (Statistics Estonia, 2010). According to returns to the 2000 census, approximately 40 per cent of the ethnic minorities in the country have Estonian citizenship, 19 per cent are Russian citizens and as many as 38 per cent3 have no citizenship at all (Van Elsuwege, 2004; Tammaru and Kontuly, 2010). There are many barriers for people from different ethnic groups to overcome in order to form unions, because Estonian society is segregated according to ethnicity across a number of dimensions: language, work, and geography. Only 41 per cent of ethnic minorities speak Estonian at an elementary level or higher, according to the 2000 census; most ethnic minorities, including the non-Russian groups, speak Russian. Language is an important obstacle to interethnic communication and thus the formation of unions. Moreover, the Estonian labour market is segregated along ethnic lines (Tammaru and Kulu, 2003), the causes of which are rooted in the Soviet occupation of Estonia from 1940 to 1991. Estonia is also segregated spatially along ethnic lines, with ethnic minorities being concentrated in cities (Tammaru and Kulu, 2003). During the Soviet period, there were separate Estonian and Russian language schools, a system that reinforced ethnic separation. Nowadays, language
1 The international literature often uses the term ‘mixed ethnic union’ to denote unions between minority and majority group members. However, minority–minority unions can also be ethnically mixed; hence, we use the term minority–majority union in the empirical part of the paper. We herein use the terms ‘union’, ‘marriage’, and ‘couple’ as synonyms. In the empirical part of the paper, we study both married and cohabiting couples and treat them as one category. 2 This estimate is based on the authors' analysis of data from the 2001 census of England and Wales. The total percentage of non-white ethnic minorities was 8.8 in 2001. 3 The period since the 2000 census has witnessed a noticeable decrease in the number of stateless persons in Estonia (Järve, 2007).
3 difference is less of a barrier to integration. For one thing, Russian secondary schools in Estonia are bilingual and a share of ethnic minority parents now opt to send their children to Estonian language schools. For another, university courses are now taught mainly in Estonian. These developments all increase the likelihood that members of younger age cohorts will form minority–majority unions. The aim of the study described herein was to gain more insight into the patterns of minority–majority ethnic unions in Estonia. We investigated the determinants of being in a minority–majority union for both Estonian and ethnic minority women using unique data from the 2000 Estonian census, which contains anonymised individual-level data for the whole population. We were especially interested in the interplay among immigrant generation, (self-reported) ethnicity, birth cohort, socio-economic status, and place of residence.
2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND People tend to choose partners who share similar demographic, social, economic, ethnic and cultural characteristics – so-called marital homogamy (Kalmijn, 1998; Kalmijn and van Tubergen, 2006). In general, most people prefer a partner with the same background (positive assortative mating). Immigrants often display cultural and socio-economic characteristics that differ from those of members of the host society. These differences can hinder the formation of ethnic minority–majority unions. The members of minority groups who have integrated well into the host society are the most likely to form a union with members of the majority group because their ethnicity is no longer a marker of their distinctiveness (Gordon, 1964). The observation that the minority partner in many minority–majority couples has a high level of education, and the observation that second- and later-generation members ethnic minorities have higher rates of forming mixed ethnic unions with a member of the majority group than foreign-born immigrants seems to support integration theories (Hwang et al., 1997; Muttarak, 2003). However, a willingness to interact with other ethnic groups is not a sufficient condition for mixed ethnic unions to form; there must also be opportunities for such interactions to take place (Blau, 1977). Geographic proximity between members of the minority and majority groups increases the frequency of interactions and thus improves the chances for the type of regular contact that can lead to a long-term relationship (Bossard, 1932; Clark, 1952; Coleman and Haskey, 1986; Kalmijn and Flap, 2001). People spend most of their time in a limited number of highly segregated spaces, such as schools, neighbourhoods and workplaces. As a result, they tend to choose partners that have similar characteristics (Houston et al., 2005). In most western societies, a large proportion of ethnic minorities live spatially segregated from the majority group and are often concentrated in major cities (Bolt and Van Kempen, 2010; Tammaru and Kontuly, 2010). A number of explanations have been put forward for this segregation, including the following: a preference for ethnic groups to live together in order to socialise; the improvement in ethnic infrastructure that may arise from living in ethnic clusters; the structures of the labour and housing markets; discrimination by the majority population; and the socio-economic characteristics of ethnic minority groups, which cause them to end up in similar residential environments (Harris, 1999). Living outside a concentration area of one’s own ethnic group can be expected to increase the likelihood that one will form a mixed ethnic union (Feng et al., 2010; Houston et al., 2005).
4 The literature on marriage and partnering often uses the metaphor of the market to understand the processes by which people form partnerships (Blau, 1977; Kalmijn and van Tubergen, 2010). As with any other market, in the marriage market there is supply and demand. On the demand side, individual preferences with regard to the characteristics of the potential partner play a role. On the supply side, the opportunity structure of the market determines whether someone is able to realise his or her preferences (Niedomysl et al., 2010). The choice of partner is constrained strongly by the demographic composition of an individual's search area (Blossfeld and Meyer, 1988; Kalmijn and Flap, 2001; Monden and Smits, 2005). In light of the foregoing, that people choose partners with similar characteristics can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that a person's choice of partner is constrained by the opportunities available in the market. This opportunity structure is shaped by the places people visit, which tend to be places where they meet others who have characteristics similar to themselves (the supply-side argument, see Fischer et al., 1977; Flap, 1999; Kalmijn and Flap, 2001). While ethnic residential segregation is pervasive, opportunities to meet are greater at places of work because workplaces are less segregated than neighbourhoods, and differences between immigrant and native labour market outcomes tend to decrease over time (Ellis et al., 2004; Houston et al., 2005; Rendall et al., 2010; Rebhun, 2010; Tammaru et al., 2010). Endogamous relationships are the most common, which may suggest that such relationships offer the greatest benefit to those involved. However, gainsaying this, exogamous (mixed) relationships do offer benefits to those involved (Feng et al., 2010). Preferring a partner from a different background (negative assortative mating; see Becker, 1973) is often explained using social exchange theories (Merton, 1941; Schoen and Wooldredge, 1989). Social exchange theories postulate that partners exchange resources through partnering in order to improve their social status. Thus, a majority group member that has a lower status is more likely to form a union with a minority group member if the latter has a higher socio-economic status than the people with whom the member of the majority group normally associates (White and Sassler, 2000; Niedomysl et al., 2010). In such a union, both parties benefit: the member of the minority group gains contacts in the majority group, and the member of the majority group improves his or her socio-economic status. This postulate of social exchange theories is supported by studies of mixed marriages between black and white people in the US (Kalmijn, 1993; Schoen and Wooldredge, 1989). However, no support was found in studies of mixed marriages between Asians and whites (Schoen and Thomas, 1989, Fu, 2006).
3. MIGRATION AND ETHNICITY IN ESTONIA In 1934, ethnic minorities comprised 11.9 per cent of the population of Estonia, according to the last prewar census (Katus et al., 1997). The main minority groups were Russians (8.2%), Germans (1.5%), Swedes (0.7%), Latvians (0.5%), and Jews (0.4%) (Statistics Estonia, 1937). In 1940, Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union and during the period 1941 to 1944, Nazi Germany occupied briefly. At the end of this period, Estonia had lost much of its minority population and the share of ethnic minorities had dropped to approximately 3 per cent (Katus, 1996; Katus et al., 1997, 2002). Large-scale immigration began immediately after Estonia was reincorporated into the Soviet Union in late 1944 and immigration remained high throughout the 1980s (Kulu, 2004). In 1959, when the first postwar census was carried out, the share of ethnic minorities reached 25 per cent and peaked at 39 per cent in 1989 when the final pre-independence census was
5 performed (Tammaru and Kulu, 2003). Immigration was part of a deliberate political and ideological agenda to disperse Russians to member states of the Soviet Union. This political agenda brought to Estonia a wave of communist party members, Soviet military personnel, and a large industrial Russian workforce (Katus and Sakkeus, 1993). Most Russian immigrants that arrived in Estonia were employed in all-union enterprises, which were companies established by Moscow (Lindemann, 2009). A large share of the immigrants were skilled blue-collar workers, although specialists and managers were also imported from Russia (Pavelson and Luuk, 2002; Pettai and Hallik, 2002). After Estonia regained its independence in 1991, the share of ethnic minorities decreased as a result of return migration (although it should be said that most ethnic minorities stayed in Estonia). By time of the 2000 census, ethnic minorities accounted for 32 per cent of the total Estonian population, down 7 per cent from 1989. Since 1991immigration in Estonia was limited by the introduction of an annual immigration quota (see below). Russians were the dominant ethnic group in the former Soviet Union, where they comprised approximately half of the population, according to the final Soviet census carried out in 1989. Approximately 25 million Russians lived in the 14 non-Russian republics (Poppe and Hagendoorn, 2003). Furthermore, Russian was the official (and main) language used for interethnic communication in the former Soviet Union (Laitin, 1998; Pavlenko, 2007). However, the positions of ethnic minorities, and especially the positions of Russians, in Estonia changed following independence (Lindemann, 2009; Vihalemm and Kalmus, 2009; Vihalemm and Masso, 2003). When Estonia and other former Soviet republics became independent, the status of ethnic Russians suddenly shifted from being the dominant ethnic group in the Soviet Union to being a minority group in a number of the former Soviet republics (Poppe and Hagendoorn, 2003). After independence, non-Estonians had to accept their new minority status against a backdrop of political and public discourse that increasingly emphasised the importance of Estonian identity in society (Lindemann, 2009). Nation building became an important objective in the newly independent Estonia (Hallik, 2002). Language and citizenship were two important elements of this nation-building process (Rannut, 2008). In 1989, two years before the demise of the Soviet Union, the Language Law was passed, which replaced Russian with Estonian as the official language of Estonia (ENSV ÜN ja Valitsuse Teataja, 1989). This law aimed to defend the Estonian language from russification. This change not only affected Russians but also other ethnic minority groups, such as Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were more proficient in Russian than they were in Estonian (Rannut, 2008). In 1992, the Estonian parliament reapplied the 1938 Citizenship Law. This law provided rights of Estonian citizenship to all pre-1940 citizens and their descendants (Everly, 1997). Most historical ethnic minorities had Estonian citizenship before 1940 (Statistics Estonia, 1937). Members of these groups received Estonian citizenship automatically in 1992. All other Estonian residents (mainly post-1944 immigrants and their children) could obtain Estonian citizenship through naturalization or apply for citizenship in other countries, such as Russia (Pettai and Hallik, 2002). Those that were not eligible to acquire Estonian or another citizenship remained stateless. Between 1992 and 2010, the share of people classified as having undetermined citizenship decreased from 32 per cent to 7.2 per cent of the population (Statistics Estonia, 2010). In addition to providing rights of citizenship, the Citizenship Law also set an annual immigration quota of 0.1 per cent of the permanent population. Later revisions in the Citizenship Law tightened the quota (to 0.05%), but widened the categories of people eligible to enter Estonia outside the quota (such as family reunification and the migration of EU citizens and citizens of other developed countries). These revisions also made it easier to obtain Estonian citizenship.
6 The decisive precondition for gaining Estonian citizenship is still proficiency in the Estonian language (Lindemann, 2009). This language requirement is far reaching because a number of members of minority groups who have lived in Estonia for a long time, and some that were even born in the country, do not qualify for Estonian citizenship because of a lack of proficiency in Estonian (Hallik, 2002). That these people should lack such proficiency is primarily because Russian was the official language during the Soviet period. The 2000 census reported that 41 per cent of members of ethnic minority groups speak Estonian, but the census question only asked whether people had an elementary knowledge of the language. Sample surveys carried out between 1989 and 2008 showed that the share of ethnic minorities who speak Estonian to a more advanced level only increased from 13–15 per cent at the beginning of the 1990s to 18–21 per cent in 2008 (Vihalemm, 2010). Proficiency in Estonian is highest among the younger generations of ethnic minorities who attended school post- independence, but approximately one in four 15–29-year-old members of ethnic minorities still do not speak Estonian well (Vihalemm, 2007). This lack of proficiency in Estonian among members of ethnic minorities limits access to the labour market, because such proficiency is required by law in all public-sector and some private-sector jobs (Lindemann, 2009). As a result, members of ethnic minorities who do not speak Estonian, especially stateless persons, have limited access to labour market opportunities. As a result of this and Soviet labour-market policies, members of ethnic minorities often work in blue-collar skilled occupations, while Estonians are over-represented in public administration (Tammaru and Kulu, 2003). This occupational segregation along ethnic lines further limits opportunities to form minority–majority unions. In addition, the school system is still segregated by language (Asser et al., 2002; Kalmus and Pavelson, 2002; Saar, 2010), which reinforces the segregation of the labour market. During the Soviet period there were separate Estonian and Russian language schools in Estonia. Since the end of this period, a number of factors have combined to reduce the amount of language segregation in education. All Russian secondary schools have become bilingual and now also teach partly in Estonian. An increasing number of ethnic minority parents are also sending their children to Estonian schools. The share of children of school age attending Russian schools dropped from 41 per cent in 1993 to 27 per cent in 2000 (Kalmus and Pavelson, 2002). University courses are now mainly taught in Estonian, too. As a consequence of these changes in the education system, proficiency in Estonian is higher among younger generations of ethnic minorities schooled in Estonia since 1991 than in older generations (Vihalemm, 2007), which has had the overall effect of improving interethnic relations among younger generations. However, ethnic minorities are still over-represented in vocational education and Estonians in general education. Soviet housing policies (which were linked strongly to labour-market polices) contributed to the spatial segregation of ethnic minorities in Estonia. Most Russian immigrants to Estonia during the Soviet period were housed in the larger cities and industrial areas. At the time of the 2000 census, 42 per cent of ethnic minorities lived in Tallinn and another 31 per cent lived in the industrial cities in the north-east of Estonia. As a result, ethnic minorities formed 46 per cent of the population of Tallinn and 86 per cent of the population of the north-eastern cities (Tammaru and Kontuly, 2010). Both labour-market and spatial segregation caused immigrant workers and their families to have limited contact with mainstream Estonian society (Pavelson and Luuk, 2002; Vöörmann and Helemäe, 2003). Interestingly, a significant proportion of the majority Estonian population also has an immigrant background. A considerable Estonian diaspora developed as a result of two waves of emigration. Between the 1850s and 1915, approximately 200,000 ethnic Estonians left Estonia, mainly to live in the Russian Empire. As a result, as many as 19 per cent of ethnic Estonians lived outside Estonia (Kulu, 2000; Tammaru et al., 2010). During World War II,
7 there was a second wave of migration when at least 70,000 Estonians fled to western countries as political refugees (Tammaru et al., 2010). Between 1920 and 1923, almost 38,000 ethnic Estonians returned from Russia (Kulu, 2000). In the 1940s, more than 50,000 descendants of 19th century Estonian emigrants migrated from the Soviet Union back to Estonia (Kulu, 2000). Because of this complex history of migration and return migration, a considerable proportion of ethnic Estonians in Estonia were born abroad. The older generations in the return diaspora are of single Estonian origin and have Estonian as their first language. By contrast, the younger generations are often of mixed ethnic origin and do not always have Estonian as their first language (Kulu, 2000).
4. HYPOTHESES On the basis of the above review of the literature on mixed ethnic unions between minority and majority groups and the specific Estonian ethnic landscape, we formulated a set of hypotheses about the characteristics of those people in minority–majority unions in Estonia. Firstly, it can be hypothesised that ethnic minority women that have the closest ties to Estonian society and culture are most likely to form a union with an ethnic Estonian. In addition, it can be hypothesised that Estonian women who were brought up outside Estonia, or who have parents who were brought up in the Estonian diaspora, are more likely to be in a minority–majority union. Secondly, supply-side theory leads to the formulation of the hypothesis that members of ethnic minorities who work in white-collar occupations (where they have most opportunities to meet ethnic Estonians) are the most likely to be in minority–majority unions. Although ethnic minorities are relatively highly educated, many work in blue-collar skilled occupations, which provide them with limited opportunities to come into contact with the majority group of Estonians. For Estonian women, we hypothesise that those in blue-collar occupations are most likely to be in minority–majority unions because these occupations bring them into contact with ethnic minorities. Thirdly, although the present study is not focused on where minority–majority partnerships are formed, we expect to find that ethnic minority women living outside the major cities are most likely to be in mixed ethnic unions because they are more likely to meet potential Estonian partners. It can thus be hypothesised that Estonian women living in cities are more likely than others to be in minority–majority unions because ethnic minorities are concentrated in cities, increasing the likelihood of meeting a suitable partner.
5. METHODOLOGY
5.1 Data The study used data from the 2000 Estonian census, which includes individual-level, anonymised records for the entire population4 of Estonia (1.37 million). The size of the dataset allows researchers to analyse relatively small groups in society in great detail. The
4 A limited number of cases were excluded from the analysis due to missing data: Data was missing on ethnicity (0.6%); country of birth/origin (1.2%); labour market status (0.6%); occupation (1.3%); and place of residence in 1989 (0.8%). Level of education was missing for 2 per cent of the population. We created a separate dummy for this category, but this is not shown in the tables.
8 census included questions on self-reported ethnicity as well as the respondent's country of birth and the country of birth of both parents (Statistics Estonia, 2001). By special request, Statistics Estonia provided us with the self-reported ethnicity of both partners for those living in a union, either cohabiting or married. We used the self-reported ethnicity of both partners in order to define three main types of couple (including both cohabiting and married couples), namely (i) majority–majority or Estonian–Estonian couples (both partners consider themselves to be Estonians, n = 171,821), (ii) minority–majority couples (one partner considers her/himself to be Estonian and the other partner considers her/himself to be a member of an ethnic minority, n = 23,089) and (iii) minority–minority couples (both partners consider themselves to be members of an ethnic minority, n = 79,776). These three categories were further refined by taking into account country of birth.
5.2 Method We modelled the probability of being in a minority–majority union for ethnic minority women and for Estonian women aged 20 years or older and living with a male partner (either cohabiting or married). Because the data include both partners in a couple, and because these individuals are dependents, we only analysed the probability of being in a minority–majority union for women. However, we ran similar models for men and found no major differences in the results. The full logistic regression model can be written as follows:
p(Yi = 1) K
log = + X k ik 1 – p(Y = 1) k=1 i where p(Yi =1) is an individual’s i = 1, … I probability of having a partner from another ethnic group and 1 – p(Yi = 1) is an individual’s i = 1, … I probability of having a partner from the same ethnic group; is a constant, Xik is the value of the variable for an individual and k is the parameter that describes the effect of this variable, with K variables. In the models including ethnic minority women only (Table 2), we estimated the probability of having an Estonian partner; the reference category was having an ethnic minority partner. In the models including Estonian women only (Table 3), we estimated the probability of having an ethnic minority partner; the reference category was having an Estonian partner. The models in Tables 2 and 3 include a range of explanatory variables that can be expected to affect the probability of being in a minority–majority union. The country of birth/origin variable consists of three categories: (i) first generation/foreign-born immigrant, (ii) second generation immigrant, and (iii) third generation immigrant or native. We used the same coding for both ethnic Estonians and ethnic minorities in order to investigate whether Estonians that have an immigrant background (including return migrants) are more likely to have a minority partner than do native-born Estonians. The birth cohort variable consists of six categories. Type of education is measured by using two categories (general or vocational education) and level of education is measured by using four categories (primary or low, secondary or middle, university or high, and those that are still in education). Occupation is measured by using nine categories, including a category for those not in paid employment. Place of residence is measured from the answers given to both the 1989 census (asked retrospectively in the 2000 census) and the 2000 census. This resulted in four categories: (i) urban dweller (lived in urban areas in both 1989 and 2000), (ii) rural dweller (lived in rural areas in both 1989 and 2000), (iii) rural-to-urban migrant (lived in a rural area in 1989 and in
9 an urban area in 2000), and (iv) urban-to-rural migrant (lived in an urban area in 1989 and in a rural area in 2000). The models including ethnic minority women only (Table 2) also include ethnicity in five categories (Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Finnish, and Other). We applied a stepwise modelling strategy for women who are members of an ethnic minority (Models 1 to 4) and an ethnic majority (Models 5 to 8). Models 1 and 5 only include the country of birth/origin variable to gain more insight into the role that intergenerational variation plays in the occurrence of minority–majority unions. In Models 2 and 6, birth cohort, ethnicity (only for ethnic minority women in Model 2) and the type and level of education are added. In Models 3 and 7, occupation is added. Finally, in Models 4 and 8 place of residence in 1989 and 2000 is added to gain more insight into the role of location and migration on minority–majority unions.
6. RESULTS
6.1 Descriptive statistics Figure 1 provides an overview of the frequency of different types of couple by birth cohort at the time of the 2000 census. However, the data do not necessarily paint an accurate picture of the likelihood of members of different birth cohorts engaging in different types of union because, as is suggested by the literature, divorce and separation levels may be higher for mixed unions. Figure 1 only shows the surviving unions by couple type in 2000. Majority– majority couples comprise 63 per cent of the total population, with a higher share than average among both younger and older birth cohorts. Minority–minority unions account for 29 per cent of all unions, with a lower share for younger cohorts. Minority–majority unions comprise approximately 9 per cent of all couple types, with small variations across all birth cohorts.
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Table 1 provides an overview of the characteristics of women aged 20 and over who are in a union, by union type. Interestingly, the country of birth variable (including the country of birth of the parents) highlights some of the complexities of the Estonian ethnic landscape. Of the women in majority–majority couples, 87 per cent have no immigrant background. Moreover, 12 per cent were born in Estonia but are classified as second-generation immigrants because one of their parents was born abroad. These women could have Estonian parents who are return migrants or they could have been born within a mixed ethnic union, but they still identify themselves as Estonians. One per cent of women in Estonian–Estonian couples are classified as foreign-born. Of those in minority–minority couples, 64% of women are foreign-born, 31 per cent are second-generation immigrants, and 5 per cent are third- generation immigrants or natives. Information on minority–majority couples is presented in two columns: one for couples in which there is an Estonian woman and one for couples in which there is an ethnic minority woman. The majority of Estonian women in minority– majority couples do not have an immigrant background, but as many as 34 per cent come from families where one or both parents are foreign-born, and 8 per cent are foreign-born themselves. This is an interesting finding; Estonian women who have an immigrant background are much more likely to be in a mixed ethnic union than are Estonian women who do not have such a background. The fact that they or their parents were foreign-born makes them more inclined to form a union with a member of an ethnic minority. Women
10 from an ethnic minority in minority–majority couples are mostly foreign-born (57%). Over one-third (35%) are second-generation immigrants and 8 per cent are third-generation immigrants or natives.
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